Monday, February 6, 2017

It was in 1998, during the Siggraph Symposium, that Paul Debevec introduced a method for integrating synthetic objects into “real-world” images. In his communication, Debevec revealed the secret of extracting light from any environment and rendering objects into this light. This simple method used a mirrored ball placed in the center of a space, which was photographed in a high dynamic range of light (HDR). By combining the resulting multiple-exposure images, Debevec created a single concave image, which functioned as an omnidirectional radiation map of the space. The HDR contained all necessary data to merge any alien object into a pre-existing background.

Today we can see a good amount of HDR images on the Internet, as empty scenarios longing for objects. In 2008, Miguel Soares used an HDR image of a Japanese interior as a starting point for his 3D animation wabane. Here the artist brilliantly inverted Paul Debevec's process and, instead of inserting a common object in the light of an HDR scenario, he places in it a floating moving mirror, that changes its shape according to sound. wabane presents a shining post-apocalyptic living mirror that reflects, in its ever-changing curved surface, the void of an abandoned room.

After a residency period in Oporto, Miguel Soares will finally give us the opportunity of seeing his HDR masterpiece projected, by far the video that best fits Oporto's dimmed/doomed atmosphere. Along with wabane we will also be exhibiting white star, science fair and his latest video, naso. This selection of very short animations, or videos from a music album, as Soares refers to them, reveal carefully designed landscapes, digital terrariums optimized for the study of unknown creatures and things, entities that live and die to the laws of sound and nostalgia.

.

Oporto is a studio and a non-profit space located in the old center of Lisbon. occupying the unique environment of the headquarters of a former Merchant Sailors Union. Since 2007 Oporto has been hosting undigestible and resistant art, having a special focus on experimental film and video. The program is extremely slow as the selection of the pieces screened is made on an overall idea of an exquisite corpse . The space is programmed by Alexandre Estrela in collaboration with Ana Baliza and it is sponsored by GAU- Gestão de Audiovisuais